24 November 2010

new LED lighting to replace the old rope lighting --- they might need to work on programming of the light sequence a little --- one of the new buildings up the street has a huge wall in the lobby that fades in and out with different colors --- little white sparkly lights are all last century i guess

the visitor center (1958) at flamingo overlooks florida bay and has been painted a neutral off white for years --- it has been transformed by returning to the original flamingo-pink and sky-blue color scheme ----

they dug up a good chunk of the everglades for agriculture a hundred years ago --- some of the land has been restored and a lot more built over, but there are still vast fields of everything from english peas to palm trees

this was a part of the everglades i'd never seen before --- the tower was built in 1966 --- great views --- there were a lot of birds, anhinga, egrets, and wood storks and others i had never seen before --- alligators all over the place with the boy alligators growling and fussing over territory ---

20 November 2010

the worker people out front must have stayed up all night digging around, putting in wiring and installing the little fences --- and the other worker people were up bright and early climbing all over what was the tall radio tower, which they will have disappeared from view entirely within the hour

16 November 2010

designed by w. l. stoddart, who also designed the ga. terrace and the ponce apts., was begun in 1916, but construction was interrupted by world war i and not resumed after the war --- in 1995 an additional ten stories were constructed and it was re-opened as a hotel, which didn't last long --- then it was eaten by ga. state, which has now burped it back up again, to be reborn as a comfort suites hotel --- a first for south of the tracks and something that will get a lot of use from visitors to the various agencies in the federal center, just a block to the west ---

11 November 2010

i got an ancestor or two that participated in the revolution and another couple in the war of 1812 --- some in the war against northern aggression, one of whom is buried at vicksburg --- just as many avoided the whole thing if they could ---

my maternal grandpa was stationed in puerto rico in 1918 , but my grandpa jones was in france, amid mustard gas and unending trench warfare (that's him at extreme left)--- stroked out in his old age, he use to sing to me when i was a kid, "on top of old smokey," with which he tried to relay some memory of a comrade in a watchtower in france, singing that song for some unexplained reason that might or might not have included drunkeness---

this photo was taken toward the end of that "great war," "the war to end all wars" ---

only it wasn't --- here's paw paw in 1943 before shipping out to the south pacific --- saipan and tinian being the high points of his tour of duty ---

a fine afternoon to inspect natural resources at the river and rottenwood creek --- or anywhere for that matter --- enjoy it now --- next week it is supposed to rain all week, after which there will be a lot more bare trees, and the weather itself will get progressively more dank and dismal in order to have us in the right mood for the upcoming holiday season

broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime― mark twain

truly, what of good

ever have prophets brought to men?

craft of many words,

only through

evil your message speaks.

seers bring aye

terror, so to keep

men afraid.

―

aeschylus

he cannot be a gentleman which loveth not a dog.

john northbrooke, c. 1570

Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas.

The seed of our destruction will blossom in the desert, the alexin of our cure grows by a mountain rock, and our lives are haunted by a Georgia slattern, because a London cutpurse went unhung. Each moment is the fruit of forty thousand years. The minute-winning days, like flies, buzz home to death, and every moment is a window on all time.

I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.

john stuart mill in a letter to conservative mp sir john pakington (march 1866)